I get curious about new things. My real strength is going into a field that has not been investigated before, and finding new approaches to it.
Life's a hobby.
I have many shortcomings. I feel very lucky to have been able to have what I've had.
I did get a very fine education, and not just in science. It took some pressure on the part of my elders to convince me that I really should take an interest in humanities.
Try hard to find out what you're good at and what your passions are, and where the two converge, and build your life around that.
We are all very individual. You have to find out what you can do best, and be self-conscious about that.
Everybody has to learn for the first time.
When I was in high school, I became interested in cytochemistry: chemical analysis under the microscope, and trying to understand the composition of cells.
I was reading five or six years ahead of my grade during public school. I was pretty bored. I made a contract with some of my teachers that if I didn't ask too many questions, I could work in the back of the room.
I was making a lot of momentous personal decisions. I was still very very young: when the prize was awarded, I was 33; the work I had done when I was 21.
Although I am a public figure, I'm still a little shy. I don't think my own personality is important. I prefer to keep some small dosage of privacy.
I started on the use of the Internet for scientific communication. Our research group was one of the very first to make really systematic use of it as a way of managing research projects.
I'd like to put in a vote for the intrinsic fascination of science.
If you wanted to dissect the structure of living cells, genetic analysis was an extremely powerful method, so my interest turned to that.
I'm chairing a UNESCO committee on how to improve global Internet communications for science; help third-world people get onto the Net so they can be part of the process.
All of civility depends on being able to contain the rage of individuals.
If we have isolated individuals able to inflict enormous harm, imagine what a single lunatic can do with a nuclear weapon. I think the whole base of civil society is at risk.
I wish I had a talent for dropping things as well as taking on new ones. It gets to be quite a clutter after a while.
If lifespan jumps by 30 or 40 years, that has enormous implications.
My ambitions were already very clearly fixed by the time I was 6 or 7.
